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VIDEO: 4 Ways to Increase Your Pipeline and Improve Your Forecasting

As a sales person, you know how important it is to increase your pipeline with qualified deals and work them efficiently through the sales funnel. But what do you do when your manager tells you to close a deal now – this month or this quarter – and it’s not in your buyer’s timeframe? We have all seen this a million times.

But there are big problems with forcing a deal to close on your timeframe. Most likely it will upset your potential buyer. It may even cause you to leave money on the table (or worse yet, lose the deal). And it will absolutely threaten the accuracy of your sales forecast.

So, instead of pushing deals to close when your manager needs them to, view my latest video for 4 useful tips to build a robust, realistic sales pipeline. Your manager will have confidence in your ability to accurately forecast if, and only if, you have enough qualified deals in your pipeline and you close them when you say they will close. As a result, you’ll gain back the control to close deals on your buyers’ timelines, and not your manager’s.

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Your sales manager will also have a few options going forward. S/he can then focus on coaching you and others and get out of the habit of asking you or anyone on your team to force a deal to close. The better everyone can forecast accurately, the better it will be for the buyer and everyone up and down the sales chain.

Have you been asked to close a deal on your manager’s timeline, and not your buyer’s? How did you handle it? Share your story!

Janice Mars, Principal and Founder of SalesLatitude, is a sales performance improvement consultant and change agent focused on growing top performers to impact bottom line growth. With more than 30 years of experience as a senior business and sales executive, she helps companies build successful sales teams by maximizing their time and resources, selling from the buyer’s point of view, and strengthening the effectiveness of leadership. View my LinkedIn profile | Twitter